Show IH: Solvent, Collaborative brainstorming
Hi IH,
I’ve always been interested in finding a way for people to share and discuss ideas in a way that makes collaboration easy. Ideas can’t be effectively communicated through the single text block that most forums and communities use. In order to solve this, I’m building Solvent, a collaborative brainstorming platform where users can share their ideas in a more organized and flexible way. I’ve built a functional prototype with a single project. That project is Solvent so you can use Solvent to help build Solvent.
Since IH is a community of people who like to discuss ideas, I thought that this would be the perfect place to find users and get their input. Here is the link to the demo with the introduction https://www.experisol.app . If you want to jump straight in use this link instead https://www.experisol.app/solution/1/ .
Thanks ahead of time!
2 pieces of feedback.
The landing page has quite a lot of text. While it's good that you're explaining what the product does, it's very hard to read, especially the way it's designed (your font and colors). I would simplify that a lot if you want people to stay on the page and read everything.
I have no idea what this product is after trying the prototype. I'm not sure if it was broken for me or something, but all I see is essentially a blog post that I can't edit or 'brainstorm' on in any way. The prototype I saw does not reflect the stuff I read on the landing page. Am I missing something?
Thanks for the feedback.
Idefinitely see what you're saying with your first point. I will try to work on that.
I don't think you missed anything, but I just didn't explain well enough. The prototype is supposed to be an example of a "project/post".
Only the project owner is able edit the post directly, while other users can offer suggestions and feedback through the comments. So that's why you were unable to edit the idea.
In the finished version, users would be able to quickly browse other user's projects and create their own.
Does that make more sense?
That makes more sense. But in that case I'm having trouble understanding the difference between using your website and making a blog post on my own website and asking for comments? Or even just using a Google doc? Is it more about the community?
Solvent is heavily built around the assumption that there is a community around it. I think one of the issues using a blog post or google doc is that the people who want to share their ideas will have to do a lot more work to find people to share them with, and people who like discussing ideas only get one topic of discussion. I'm trying to make it as easy as possible for people to share their ideas, and as enjoyable as possible to browse and discuss them.
If I succeed in building a community around Solvent, my hope is that there will be plenty of projects so that users can easily browse through them and offer comments. This also gives users a way to interact with and follow projects that they find interesting instead of bookmarking a ton of different blogs.
Thank you again. Your input has been really helpful!